Also, FTA:There's no classic Start button and menu in Update 1, but that's the only thing that's really missing from the next big update. When the OS runs it will automatically detect the hardware it's on (something that should have always been the case) and adjust its behavior accordingly. If it's running on a tablet, or a touch enabled PC, Windows 8.1 will boot straight to the Start screen -- unless you set it not to. If, however, it's running on a computer with mouse and keyboard, it will boot straight to the desktop.

In other words, they still don't get it. I have a touch-enabled laptop, and I do not use the touchscreen. I installed Classic Shell and have not looked back.

Carn:Hell no, but I would feel totally confident recommending 8.1 over 7 for people for a new system, assuming cost is the same.

I went the exact opposite way with this. I have yet to recommend 8 to anyone.

Take for example one of my customers - he's a smart guy who is a Financial Adviser. He makes money when he's working with clients. He does not make money when he's learning how to deal with Metro in Win 8 - so when his laptop died we got him a new Dell with Win 7 - that was like two weeks ago.

The learning curve from XP to 7 is negligible. From 7 > 8 is just hard enough that people like DO NOT WANT to do it, period. They are smart and capable, but they are also focused elsewhere.

We've noticed your AOL subscription has lapsed. Is there a problem with the software itself? I'm empowered to offer you a month of free service today in recognition of the work you've put into helping us improve our user experience...

Telos:In other words "it's different so it's bad, I want the exact same thing as before. Change is bad." Sorry, but the old start menu sucked horribly. The new start menu (aka Metro Desktop) is much better in that you don't have to sort through tiny folders to find what you want, and even if you don't see it you can type to search.

Yah because having all 18 of Office's stupid little obscure apps along with every other executable in one gigantic unsorted tile set resembling an detonated skittle bag is so great. The superior Start Menu from 7 had a self learning 'commonly used' section front and center and then an organized tree to hold all those bullshiat apps you use once a century, and it also featured a search by typing right there as well. Sure Metro would be okay for people who barely scratch the capabilities of a computer, but anyone doing any real amount of work on a system has enough apps installed that the flat sprawl gets hideous.

So this will be another thread where people will come in and tell everyone how if you don't like the Metro UI, you're a dinosaur who deserves to be put down? Oh good...we haven't had one of those in at least a day and a half.

I actually enjoy the Metro UI on my Surface Pro (purchased at a crazy low price because no one is buying them). On my desktop PC, not so much. This update sounds like it...well...almost does what Classic Shell does already for me. I'm guessing the people who run Microsoft these days are so far removed from every day work and computing that they have no friggin' clue what the average user does. It's like they watched a few kids playing with an iPad at Starbucks and said, "My god, that's what EVERYONE who uses a computer wants now!" Uh, no. It's not. Especially not the business computing community, which is vastly larger than the entertainment computing market.

For YEARS Windows XP was complete and absolute crap and people weren't going to move away from Windows 2000 (which you left out). Until SP2, and even a bit in SP3, XP was one of the worst offenders for crashes and bluescreens on the planet. It seemed like if you did anything to the video card drivers, you'd bluescreen that operating system. I remember the pain of having to deal with Bluetooth drivers and having to use 3rd party controls to get devices to work properly. And god help you if you wanted to search & index the operating system and a large external media drive. In XP, it's like working with a snail.

It seems like people love to look at that Fisher Price operating system with rose colored glasses.

The problem with the new windows is that for basic desktop or laptop use, the learning curve is not rewarded with increased functionality or ease of use, meaning that I would gladly switch back to Win 7.

On my TV, I prefer windows 8.1, but not by a huge margin. I can see that everything is headed in the direction ofhaving to be online at all times. I am starting to wonder though, if there is a new opportunity for Linux here as Microsoft tries to steer people toward more costly services and hardware.

Of course somebody says that every few years and is proven wrong because MS rules the business markets. That will continue for now.

Metro is so hateful because it swaps out the whole desktop with a bunch of kid friendly giant tiles. In the ensuing brain fart you forget why you clicked on the button in the first place. That's what pisses people off even if they don't realize it.

If clicking the button launched a mini metro which slid in from the side and functioned almost analogously with the old start menu, then Windows 8.x wouldn't receive anything like the same amount of hate.

Other improvements would include being able to zoom tiles in or out to suit the screen size, multiple selection / rubber banding, properly tile groups (i.e. a tile can hold a group of tiles rather than that bizarro spacing abomination which exists right now), and general polish which acknowledges people don't always like mashing the screen with their fat fingers when they have a mouse and keyboard.

Carn:My laptop I got this fall came with 8.1 and the first thing I did was disable most of the Metro stuff and turn on classic. This article writer sounds like a noob. Don't get me wrong, MS completely whiffed with the concept of "It'll behave the same on all devices, isn't that an awesome idea!?" but the underlying operating system is quite good. I like the changes to some of the system settings, task manager updates, windows explorer navigation, and so on. Would I pay to upgrade my desktop from 7 to 8.1? Hell no, but I would feel totally confident recommending 8.1 over 7 for people for a new system, assuming cost is the same.

Whatever for? What makes you say "the underlying operating system is quite good" -- how is that perceptible to you in ordinary use, over and above the underlying goodness that's the same as Vista and 7? (Oh sorry, on second reading, you say you like where they hid the system settings this time. Not a dig, it's just something they seem to re-hide with every version of Windows.)

It's funny the headline comes from someone who then says "I'm now a fan". This is the kind of damning faint praise that's a MS hallmark at this point.

I just want to know if the stupid hot corners are on by default or not. They are the most aggravating thing, even after installing ClassicShell.

The time spent lost in trying to get non-Metro versions of things like Skype to co-exist and NOT confuse the crap out of the ordinary user is time I think I'd rather spend fighting malware or something. From the sounds of it, this new kludge still don't hunt.

It's your operating system. It will find some way to annoy you eventually.

Why the Windows 8 haters want to have an outdated UI option that nobody should be using anymore anyway is a mystery to me.

The start menu uses less than 30% of the screen for a task that is pretty much always a quick uni-tasking activity. You click the menu find what you want in tightly fitted text and small icons open it and the start menudisappears.

Metro is a full screen start menu that displays live data and larger icons that are easily found and clicked on quickly.

Then again who bothers witheither? Just hit the windows key and type the first three letters of the name of what you want.

yukichigai:BumpInTheNight: Telos: In other words "it's different so it's bad, I want the exact same thing as before. Change is bad." Sorry, but the old start menu sucked horribly. The new start menu (aka Metro Desktop) is much better in that you don't have to sort through tiny folders to find what you want, and even if you don't see it you can type to search.

Yah because having all 18 of Office's stupid little obscure apps along with every other executable in one gigantic unsorted tile set resembling an detonated skittle bag is so great. The superior Start Menu from 7 had a self learning 'commonly used' section front and center and then an organized tree to hold all those bullshiat apps you use once a century, and it also featured a search by typing right there as well. Sure Metro would be okay for people who barely scratch the capabilities of a computer, but anyone doing any real amount of work on a system has enough apps installed that the flat sprawl gets hideous.

"Unsorted" being the biggest issue for me. The part where the Start Screen insists on taking up the whole screen? Okay, yes, less than ideal and a big downside, but that might have been survivable if they hadn't also prevented you from making more than one layer of sub-folders. What the fark is the point of disallowing that?

Right now, my start menu has several basic categories for first-level folders (Audio, Internet, Games, General, Maintenance, Video, etc.), then sub-folders within that. Makes it a lot easier to find what I need. With Windows 8 I can't do that. I'm expected to go hunting through several screens of unrelated crap.

Limiting folder complexity and making the whole thing take up the whole screen are bad enough by themselves. Combined? Nuh-uh, not even trying. Try again.

I'd expect at some point they will bring that back, because even on my iPhone you can make a folder and put 8 things in it. This:

Is not realistic. I had to take three screenshots on a 1920x1200 monitor to get all of them in (the cat face is duplicated on the right because it didn't fill an entire screen). You can argue that I should go through all the icons and remove the ones I don't need, but how the fark is that an improvement? What you're seeing on that screen was 10 root folders in Windows 7 that branched out based on categories I created. Now I've got three full monitors worth of icons to pick through.

It's your operating system. It will find some way to annoy you eventually.

Why the Windows 8 haters want to have an outdated UI option that nobody should be using anymore anyway is a mystery to me.

The start menu uses less than 30% of the screen for a task that is pretty much always a quick uni-tasking activity. You click the menu find what you want in tightly fitted text and small icons open it and the start menudisappears.

Metro is a full screen start menu that displays live data and larger icons that are easily found and clicked on quickly.

Then again who bothers witheither? Just hit the windows key and type the first three letters of the name of what you want.

That's the problem, it fills the while screen with something that can be done in a small window. I usually have a pile of stuff open at once, laid out on a large monitor. Often I'm watching a video or some other real time thing and a full page start screen comes up over that.

I get it, there are some people who want the latest and greatest no matter what and cannot fathom or even are offended that someone else may use their computer differently or have different preferences. That doesn't change the fact that I hate windows 8 and a good half of the market does too, I'm not an anomaly and yes I have used it.

Here's the thing, I'm the customer, the customer is always right. Offer the product that I want and I will buy it. Don't offer the product that you want and then get butthurt when I say that it sucks.

But if you are searching the start menu visually you really aren't watching the video, or anything else. Just the start menu.

Can you not casually watch something while looking at something else? I don't need to focus 100% on both things at once.

Fact is, a start menu works very well for my usage style. I can't force you to understand that, but do realize that not everyone works the same way an the fact that you find no advantage to something doesn't mean that someone else won't.

Would you like it if I came in and organized your room in a way that works well for me? It's better, trust me, your old way of organizing your house is obsolete, you shouldn't be using it anymore, just get used to doing it my way.

Marine1:Far Cough: Marine1: Except I've been using it on all of my systems for the last few months and I haven't had any problems that couldn't be solved by a quick Google (or Bing) search.

Shill like typing detected? Seriously, nobody really uses Bing, come on now. I don't even use Google myself any more (directly) but it's exceedingly rare that I'll run out of enough options to have to use Bing.

(But it's okay I guess. Just as many privacy issues, search is about 40% as good as Google, but I think they're still using those ridiculous full page backgrounds.)

/I know it powers other search engines too/I spend time in Vista, 7, 8, OSX, and various Linuxen, and frankly XP works more smoothly than any of them. Really. Smaller is better.

I occasionally type the queries on things I don't get into the search charm. It's Bing. Other times, I use my phone, which is a Nokia Lumia. Also Bing. Most of the time, I use Google, though.

Carousel Beast: Marine1: What I don't get is the idea of constantly kowtowing down to the lowest common denominator in everything related to software design even when it means not advancing a product in a meaningful way to take advantage of the most recent innovations in the field.

I don't get a couple of things:

1) Why you're white knighting Microsoft when they themselves have admitted their farkup. They aren't going to sleep with you.2) Why you don't seem to have any clue that a design is to promote usability, not complexity. What was it do you think was broken about the previous Windows UI that Metro "fixed"?

1) They're "admitting" their fark-up because no one will give it a damn rest. The tech press (and Fark headlines) are notorious for never giving Microsoft the benefit of the doubt on anything. They screw up, but Metro wasn't one of their screwups.2) Using it on a touchscreen, which is a desired feature of most devices today. All of those things "replacing" PCs have them. Sticking with the traditional user interface on such a product would have meant death for Windows, because Windows 7 was a PITA to use on a touchscreen or with any touch interface. Windows 8 is not as much of a PITA to use on a traditional KVM setup as Windows 7 was on a touchscreen. Once you get used to it, like anything else, it's actually better. No more guiding your cursor through a tiny channel in a dropdown menu to get to a program. No more hunting through a list of items in 12-point font in a scrollbox to get to your program folder. No more dead space on the desktop sitting there doing nothing when it could be displaying information.

I will just reiterate what I've said in previous stories about this.

In the consumer preview there was a registry hack to boot to desktop. And yes it was wonderful with a tablet.

In the release preview MS double-downed and removed the registry hack. They were mandating Metro. Everything would have been better if they had done the boot to desktop option from the beginning and maybe get rid of the charms interface on non-touchscreens.

LineNoise:Carn: Win+r mstsc. I think it still has the old run, need to verify on other machine.

Oh, yea, I know, like I said there are plenty of ways of doing it, but they defeat the point of the whole new UI when you want the default behavior of an app to work differently than it does out of the box (even when its an app that would make sense to default a different way).

I think they will get it right with some polish, but the point is in here. It isn't that the windows 8 UI is bad. Most of the examples people tout out are outright wrong, or, like me, they just need to spend 5 minutes to figure out how you do something the new way vs how it worked in 7, and people don't want to do that.

If you are someone who runs office, a browser, and a couple of games, the start menu is fine for you, and I get that. But if you suddenly have a brazillion apps on your desktop, which is what happens when you introduce the app store and the like, it starts getting to be a clunky way of organizing stuff. Tiles and a robust search make sense. They just need to figure out a middle ground of sorts

How is it clunky? I have dozens and dozens of programs installed. They're all neatly arranged in categories in my start menu with the 3 or 4 I use most often in the quicklaunch toolbar. The desktop is my workspace, stuff I've downloaded that needs to be sorted, things that need immediate attention, the recycle bin, network shares, etc.

That's how I've done things since Win95 and it works very well for me. That's how I intend to continue doing things. The beauty of a PC is that it's customizable and configurable. If I wanted to do it the way the vendor wants me to do it and only that way, I'd have bought a Mac years ago.

LineNoise:The problem with 8 (and even 8.1) is that people continued to use it like they did the previous versions. Instead of taking advantage of the new features, they tried to shoehorn in their method of doing things like they did in previous versions.

That isn't to say it doesn't have its faults, there are a handful of things that bug me a little in 8, but overall the hate is just people making noise. It works well, and if you use the interface as intended (yes, even without touch), you can see what they were going for and why it works.

But don't you see the problem there? A PC is a versatile tool that people use to get stuff done. The tool should be flexible enough to adapt to my workin style, not the other way around. It's fine to have a new interface available but it's a mistake to try to force everyone to adapt. There are millions of users who don't really *like* computers, they're not enthusiasts, they just need to get stuff done. Change can be good, but change for the sake of change is not good.

Ghastly:Securitywyrm: Windows 8 is just one long beta test for windows 9.

Looks like it's going to be a short beta test. They're rushing out windows 9 in early 2015 to hopefully dissipate the stink windows 8 is leaving. I'm hoping this won't mean windows 9 ends up suffering because of this.

Why do people still say this? Windows Vista came out in 2006 while Windows 7 came out in 2009 while Windows 8 came out in 2012. That's three years, the same amount of time Windows 8 will be on the market before the introduction of 9

For YEARS Windows XP was complete and absolute crap and people weren't going to move away from Windows 2000 (which you left out). Until SP2, and even a bit in SP3, XP was one of the worst offenders for crashes and bluescreens on the planet. It seemed like if you did anything to the video card drivers, you'd bluescreen that operating system. I remember the pain of having to deal with Bluetooth drivers and having to use 3rd party controls to get devices to work properly. And god help you if you wanted to search & index the operating system and a large external media drive. In XP, it's like working with a snail.

It seems like people love to look at that Fisher Price operating system with rose colored glasses.

Man, you really play up the Microsoft Party Line, don't you?

XP was great because it was a refined Windows 2000, just as Windows 7 is great because it was a refined Windows Vista. By the time XP rolled out, all the driver issues that plagued Win2k (mostly because of holdovers to the Win9x ecosystem) got ironed out and became standard. Games were far more playable on XP (and that is your killer computer application, after all)

Likewise, Vista implemented a TON of security stuff and signed drivers, both were things nobody was really prepared for. Developers were mostly too lazy to actually code the security bits into their apps before Vista came out, because the APIs allowed them to get away with it. When those holes got tightened up, it broke a lot of apps. Likewise, signed drivers made XP a necessity for many people and businesses because the original vendors were no longer supporting hardware - which some companies planned on using for a decade or more - and thus, never released drivers for. It took a while for older (but still supported) hardware to get signed drivers, which made Vista unusable for many people.

With the Vista misstep, XP had plenty of time to become finely tuned and well understood by users and IT departments. Setting Group Policies is always tricky, but benefgitted from the extra time tweaking XP to balance security and utility. Supporting your existing capital investments (hardware and applications) also meant that the status quo, as long as performance and productivity were not an issue, was the Golden Rule. For 95% of corporate America, a 6~7 year old Windows XP machine with 2~3GB of RAM can do everything its users need to do,

Of course, Microsoft doesn't have a vested interest in selling an OS 12 years ago and continuing to support it, so it has to push newer versions and give compelling reasons for users and corporations to buy it. HArdware vendors have no vested interest in supporting hardware they sold 6 or 7 years ago, so they have to push new hardware and give compelling reasons for their purchase (some, like Epson, get downright dirty and timebomb their products)

It is unfortunate that Microsoft doubled down with Win8. They confused "compelling" with "imposing their will" in trying to leverage their desktop beast as a means of forcing their mobile UI intot he worldwide acceptance.

Please stop arguing that Windows 8 (and we are talking about the Metro UI here) is great, too... if it was, in any measure, than Ballmer would still be in charge, and the team responsible for Windows 8 would still be around. It was a mistake, plain and simple, and a decade or two from now, after the fallout has finally settled, it will be chronicled by those involved as a big mistake.

MrSteve007:The only complaint people have now is UI changes for wider range of input types, which is kind of sad.

Nothing sad about. My needs as a mobile user are not the same as my needs when I am a static user. Pretty simple, really. My desktop and laptop computers need a different interface then, say, my phone or tablet.

As a static user, I don't want the lock screen or the start screen or the charm bar. You can keep all the shiate, please.

OtherLittleGuy:Fine.95 bad98 good bad98SE good2000 goodBob badME badXP good badXP SP1 bad; stabilityXP SP2 ok; stability, new featuresXP SP3 goodVista bad; stability, UAC, UI changesVista SP1 bad; but only for UI changes7 good; at launch, since it was essentially Vista SP2 8 bad; because people don't like UI changes, even though the OS is rock solid stable, faster, more secure and usable on more device types8.1; still bad, because people want the old start menu triggered on the lower left start button

I'm on 8.1 and was on 8 when it launched. It's noticeably faster than 7 was. I have no problem with Metro (though I'm usually in desktop mode) because I have most of my favorite programs pinned to the Taskbar, and other shortcuts on my desktop. If I need something I don't have in the desktop area, I hit the Windows key, type the name, and press enter. Boom, it starts.

Far Cough:HindiDiscoMonster: IRQ12: Just look how popular 'pinning' is! (ohh yea 90% of it's use is people accidentally using it)

I understand the business and branding sense having a single platform for all devices but they really screwed the pooch by forcing it instead of easing people into it by having the metro design be default but having the ability to go back to a mostly 7 layout.

The constant need to (seemingly) bury administrative tools is maddening.

you can pin those too. :-P

He meant that they keep on hiding them further and differently in each version of Windows.

LineNoise:The problem with 8 (and even 8.1) is that people continued to use it like they did the previous versions. Instead of taking advantage of the new features, they tried to shoehorn in their method of doing things like they did in previous versions.

Because in the business world when you're a corporation that employs more than 50 people who use PCs every day as an integral part of their productivity you cannot afford anything that will cause massive disruptions to people's workflow. You've probably at some point had an efficiency expert streamline your processes or simply through experience developed an efficient pipeline that maximizes productivity. Upgrades are an inevitable part as newer versions of software and hardware no longer support or fully function on older operating systems. Computers break down and need to be replaced.

The learning curve moving from a Windows XP environment (which is what most of the business world runs on) to a Windows 7 environment is minimal. The changes are minor and for the most part intuitive so most of your staff will be able to function business as usual which means no loss of production which means no loss of revenue.

Jumping from Windows XP to Windows 8 is like running headlong into a brick wall. It's painful and disorienting.

Users should not have to "shoe horn" their productivity pipelines into their new operating system. The new operating system should accept their already established and optimized work flow and augment it with new features and functionality as seamlessly as possible.

Windows 8 does not do that.

It's one thing for some tinkerer at home who never uses his computer for more than playing games, e-mail, and surfing the web to peck and hunt at the new operating system until they're able to figure it out. It doesn't matter if for a few weeks or even months he has to remind himself "oh yeah, that's not the way things work any more, DOY!"

HindiDiscoMonster:IRQ12: Just look how popular 'pinning' is! (ohh yea 90% of it's use is people accidentally using it)

I understand the business and branding sense having a single platform for all devices but they really screwed the pooch by forcing it instead of easing people into it by having the metro design be default but having the ability to go back to a mostly 7 layout.

The constant need to (seemingly) bury administrative tools is maddening.

you can pin those too. :-P

He meant that they keep on hiding them further and differently in each version of Windows.

Marine1:1) They're "admitting" their fark-up because no one will give it a damn rest. The tech press (and Fark headlines) are notorious for never giving Microsoft the benefit of the doubt on anything. They screw up, but Metro wasn't one of their screwups.

Yes. It was. Which is why they're backing away from it, why everyone involved was shiatcanned, etc. Putting Metro on a desktop OS was a screwup, period. (Hell, even the NAME Metro was a screwup, since they're not allowed to use it.) It's no conspiracy. It's not that the press is too critical of MS; it's that they're too UNCRITICAL of Apple.

2) Using it on a touchscreen, which is a desired feature of most devices today. All of those things "replacing" PCs have them. Sticking with the traditional user interface on such a product would have meant death for Windows, because Windows 7 was a PITA to use on a touchscreen or with any touch interface. Windows 8 is not as much of a PITA to use on a traditional KVM setup as Windows 7 was on a touchscreen.

True enough, I suppose. But this wasn't the answer either.Once you get used to it, like anything else, it's actually better. No more guiding your cursor through a tiny channel in a dropdown menu to get to a program. No more hunting through a list of items in 12-point font in a scrollbox to get to your program folder. No more dead space on the desktop sitting there doing nothing when it could be displaying information.

So untrue. It's better to "hunt through" screen after screen of unsorted tiles, with office applications mixed in among accidentally installed spammy apps and games? Oh, just type the name you say? Like we could do in Windows BEFORE the ugly Metro crap?

No more dead space on the desktop sitting there doing nothing when it could be displaying information.

Seriously? The dead space is not there because you can't see the desktop, or ANYTHING YOU WERE ALREADY RUNNING. Because the useless chaos of the Start screen has entirely taken over your giant screen.

Marine1:Using it on a touchscreen, which is a desired feature of most devices today. All of those things "replacing" PCs have them. Sticking with the traditional user interface on such a product would have meant death for Windows, because Windows 7 was a PITA to use on a touchscreen or with any touch interface. Windows 8 is not as much of a PITA to use on a traditional KVM setup as Windows 7 was on a touchscreen. Once you get used to it, like anything else, it's actually better. No more guiding your cursor through a tiny channel in a dropdown menu to get to a program. No more hunting through a list of items in 12-point font in a scrollbox to get to your program folder. No more dead space on the desktop sitting there doing nothing when it could be displaying information.

Using a touchscreen - is fine on a portable device that is primarily used for content consumption. In a home desktop/laptop installation, when I'm working with a real keyboard and a mouse etc, then no, it's not fine. When I'm working and creating content, I'm not touching my screen.

Sticking with a tradition interface - ON A MOBILE PLATFORM - would have indeed meant death for Windows. Metro on my smart phone? Sure. Maybe. If Android starts to suck (which it won't), I'll think about it.

MS was late to mobile party (they've never had a decent mobile OS) and their desktop users are paying the price for that now.

Unobtanium:In other words, they still don't get it. I have a touch-enabled laptop, and I do not use the touchscreen. I installed Classic Shell and have not looked back.

I donated $100 to classicshell.net, just because I have so many older clients that got rid of their XP units, bought a Win8 desktop, and lost their farking MINDS. With good reason, MS decided to push a tablet interface on them with NO INSTRUCTIONS, just because they were desperate to gain mobile market share.

They call me, I go over there, install Classic Shell, and teach them the magic "go home" Windows key on the keyboard. THAT'S IT. They're farking happy again! They have a Start menu that they're used to, and a way to get back to the desktop in any situation. They write me a check, and everyone's dancing in the streets!

Why couldn't MS do this? Wait, I just answered my question above.

Marine1:demaL-demaL-yeH: Marine1: More time has been spent biatching about Windows 8's interface than has been lost in productivity due to the interface.

With the genius at Microsoft who crammed that ribbon in Office down people's throats admitting that the new Windows interface costs days to weeks of productivity, that might not be a safe bet.

Except I've been using it on all of my systems for the last few months and I haven't had any problems that couldn't be solved by a quick Google (or Bing) search.

Learning how to use Windows 8 requires the skill set of a guy who gets paid $2.50/hour in a call center in India that takes help desk questions. That's it. If you can't figure it out after that, you're an incompetent computer user. It takes less time to get used to than Linux. End of story. Moving on.

Wow, everyone should be that savvy! You don't deal with everyday computer users, you're 733T because you use Linux! Those great unwashed out there should just leave computing to real men like you! You're biatchEN!!!

Marine1:What I don't get is the idea of constantly kowtowing down to the lowest common denominator in everything related to software design even when it means not advancing a product in a meaningful way to take advantage of the most recent innovations in the field.

I don't get a couple of things:

1) Why you're white knighting Microsoft when they themselves have admitted their farkup. They aren't going to sleep with you.2) Why you don't seem to have any clue that a design is to promote usability, not complexity. What was it do you think was broken about the previous Windows UI that Metro "fixed"?

Telos:In other words "it's different so it's bad, I want the exact same thing as before. Change is bad." Sorry, but the old start menu sucked horribly. The new start menu (aka Metro Desktop) is much better in that you don't have to sort through tiny folders to find what you want, and even if you don't see it you can type to search.

No, it's different because it takes away all context while launching another app. What was I doing last? What am I doing here again? It takes the brain a few more seconds to figure out what it was up to last and it's just a nuisance. A brain fart. If it launched in from the side and provided analogous functionality (which does not mean identical behaviour) as start menu then this wouldn't happen.

Carn:My laptop I got this fall came with 8.1 and the first thing I did was disable most of the Metro stuff and turn on classic. This article writer sounds like a noob.

And that's where MS has failed. The common user is a noob, and does not want to, or know how to work around to get rid of the Metro stuff.Sure, it's easy for me to install classic shell. Not so much for my older relatives that just want to turn on their new computer, and see something that is familiar to them.

Far Cough:That's actually a great idea -- it preserves the context the user is currently in, but still is fancy enough that MS marketing might be satisfied. The problem, as you point out, is how jarring a shift it is to fill the whole screen in the middle of your work, with something only tangentially related to a fleeting need. Unfortunately this seems to be a trend in bad design. It's how the browser tabs on Android work, too, and it drives me a little nuts.

Agreed. What is nice about how the new system works is if I want to say, launch word, I no longer have to go Start-Programs-Microsoft Office-etc. I just hit the windows key, type in a rough aproximation of what I was looking for, and it finds it and i hit enter. Its helpful when you have a brazillion programs\apps installed on a computer and are looking for something that you don't use enough to dedicate a shortcut to. Sure, I could do that in previous versions by doing start->run and typing winword, which works fine for something that has a simple executable in the path that I know the name for, but not every program is like that.

The problem with the 8 interface is that even though I can now quickly search for what I want, I've got to blank my desktop to do so. I think you hit it on the head when you say that is jarring when you are in the middle of work, and I just wanted to quickly bring up say, calculator to confirm some math or something.

My other complaint is that there isn't an easy and intuitive way to set default behavior. Case in point, I spend all day in a ton of different terminal sessions. When I run my terminal emulator, I want i to open a new one each time. You can't do that (or at least I haven't figured out an easy way of doing it) using the method described above. It will just keep bringing you back to what you already have open.

The problem with 8 (and even 8.1) is that people continued to use it like they did the previous versions. Instead of taking advantage of the new features, they tried to shoehorn in their method of doing things like they did in previous versions.

That isn't to say it doesn't have its faults, there are a handful of things that bug me a little in 8, but overall the hate is just people making noise. It works well, and if you use the interface as intended (yes, even without touch), you can see what they were going for and why it works.

BumpInTheNight:I'm guessing so, Unity the game engine is pretty spiffy. Unity the Metro of Linux UIs is certainly not, in fact among my circle of co-workers and friends its the single driving force that's making us migrate away from Ubuntu since they seem to have locked their jaws onto that and several other unwanted features.

I am building a Linux Terminal Server and I installed Ubuntu 13.10 last night. It's got all the bloat and more of any Microsoft release. It's too bad too as Ubuntu started off so promising. I moved to an lubuntu for my terminal server, and I started using Mint for my laptop last year. Ubuntu has the nicest repositories and available no-hassle software, and Mint takes that advantages and puts a non-stupid desktop on top of it.

Windows 8 is an epic failure. I tried it, hated it and so downloaded Windows 7, which I run on my Mac through Parallels, in MacView mode. Windows apps are run as if native Mac applications and even look like Mac Apps, with Apple style menus, widgets, buttons, etc.

For those of you who want to use 8 but want the older Windows look and feel, simply download Classic Shell and install it. This fantastic little app allows you to choose fro a number of previous Windows desktop styles.

Sharksfan:Carn: Hell no, but I would feel totally confident recommending 8.1 over 7 for people for a new system, assuming cost is the same.

I went the exact opposite way with this. I have yet to recommend 8 to anyone.

Take for example one of my customers - he's a smart guy who is a Financial Adviser. He makes money when he's working with clients. He does not make money when he's learning how to deal with Metro in Win 8 - so when his laptop died we got him a new Dell with Win 7 - that was like two weeks ago.

The learning curve from XP to 7 is negligible. From 7 > 8 is just hard enough that people like DO NOT WANT to do it, period. They are smart and capable, but they are also focused elsewhere.

That, and the biggest problem is that it's needlessly difficult. If there were a justifiable reason, that's one thing, but this looks like it's so they can sell more ad space.

It's your operating system. It will find some way to annoy you eventually.

Why the Windows 8 haters want to have an outdated UI option that nobody should be using anymore anyway is a mystery to me.

The start menu uses less than 30% of the screen for a task that is pretty much always a quick uni-tasking activity. You click the menu find what you want in tightly fitted text and small icons open it and the start menudisappears.

Metro is a full screen start menu that displays live data and larger icons that are easily found and clicked on quickly.

Then again who bothers witheither? Just hit the windows key and type the first three letters of the name of what you want.

There are like one trillion tech products with that name. I assume you mean the Linux one? Not the game engine, or development tool, right?

I'm guessing so, Unity the game engine is pretty spiffy. Unity the Metro of Linux UIs is certainly not, in fact among my circle of co-workers and friends its the single driving force that's making us migrate away from Ubuntu since they seem to have locked their jaws onto that and several other unwanted features.

I was a huge Ubuntu fan until the first iteration of Unity.

I moved to Linux Mint (The Debian Edition XFCE spin, since discontinued alas), and have not looked back.

There are like one trillion tech products with that name. I assume you mean the Linux one? Not the game engine, or development tool, right?

I'm guessing so, Unity the game engine is pretty spiffy. Unity the Metro of Linux UIs is certainly not, in fact among my circle of co-workers and friends its the single driving force that's making us migrate away from Ubuntu since they seem to have locked their jaws onto that and several other unwanted features.

I bought a new laptop over the weekend with Windows 8, and had zero problems installing Firefox (along with add-ons: xmarks, ad block plus, no script, and flash block)

This.

New desktop with 8.1, it automatically booted to the desktop, installed Firefox and all my other programs and even a few games that run much smoother and faster now. I can right click on the Start button to get to anywhere I need to be, and it feels a lot more faster and stable than Vista was (I know, going from bad to worse in some people's eyes).

I bought a new laptop over the weekend with Windows 8, and had zero problems installing Firefox (along with add-ons: xmarks, ad block plus, no script, and flash block)

This.

New desktop with 8.1, it automatically booted to the desktop, installed Firefox and all my other programs and even a few games that run much smoother and faster now. I can right click on the Start button to get to anywhere I need to be, and it feels a lot more faster and stable than Vista was (I know, going from bad to worse in some people's eyes).